AMMAN — The research paper “
Climate Change and Gender-Based
Violence in Jordan”, by the Information and Research Center at King Hussein
Foundation , has elicited mixed reactions from activists and
sociologists.
اضافة اعلان
The
US State Department-funded paper warned of "increasing
risks of violence against women and girls in Jordan, due to the effects of
climate change", Al-Ghad News quoted the paper as saying.
The paper stated that "women and girls may be forced to
migrate to camps, where living under temporary fabrics or plastic sheeting can
expose them to attacks from strangers. Many essential services provided to
women and girls, such as reproductive health care, education, social
protection, and responding to gender-based violence, will be disrupted by
climate disasters”.
"Climatic events
affect the natural resources needed for women and girls to earn a living and
support their families, which push some of them to engage in negative coping
mechanisms to secure a livelihood," according to the paper, which gave child marriage as
an example of such “negative coping mechanisms adopted by families to reduce
the effects of extreme poverty”.
Iman Aqrabawi, a
Jordan River Foundation intervention services
manager, told
Jordan News that extreme events caused by climate change apply to
different countries, and not to Jordan alone.
Aqrabawi said that part of the paper is about women all over the
world, and part about women in developing countries, where many women work in
the agricultural sector.
Climatic events affect the natural resources needed for women and girls to earn a living and support their families, which push some of them to engage in negative coping mechanisms to secure a livelihood,
“Jordan is not yet impacted by climate change in a way that
would affect women,” she said.
Still, she said, the UN report shows that 80 percent of those
impacted by climate change are women.
When poverty increases due to climate change, women are often
forced to quit their education or to get married “due to poverty and climate
change”, Aqrabawi said.
"Climate change does not only have economic consequences on
women; they can be subjected to abuse and violence. Therefore, we should
benefit from the paper even if it does not apply," Aqrabawi said.
Women, she said, and should be empowered
“to have an active role in facing any drastic impacts caused by climate
change".
Emy Dawud, feminist, human rights activist, and founder of the
Women's Movement Foundation, told
Jordan News that women are the most affected
group when a crisis occurs, adding that "I noticed it during my volunteer
work with victims of wars and poverty".
Dawud said that climate change could prevent women from having
access to health services, which “makes it difficult for them to control their
reproduction and access contraceptives and medical services necessary to
complete pregnancy and childbirth, increasing maternal mortality”.
She also said that it is difficult for women to access
protection systems, “especially in light of their lack of knowledge of the laws
of the host countries and the customs of their societies, which puts them in
isolation and raises the danger around them”.
According to Executive Director of
Dibeen for Environmental Development Hala Murad, the paper does not represent the Jordanian reality and
“relied on testimonies from individuals who were not experts on the topic”.
"Whoever wrote this research paper is not aware of what is
happening in Jordan. The paper for me is general and appropriates different
realties to the Jordanian one," she said.
Murad said that water shortage is a “most pressing issue
affecting Jordanian women's well-being”, adding that “there is a lack of
legislation that protects female farmers from climate or environmental dangers,
besides their lack of knowledge about the risks of working in harsh weather
conditions”.
"Some would think that the rise in temperatures would
negatively influence the man's behavior and result in him hitting his wife, but
it is not how it goes; if this happened, it would be a rare case. We cannot say
that there is an increase in violence against women because of the increase in
temperatures, but we can say that as a result of cramped living conditions that is connected
to climate change," Murad said.
As for the issue of child marriage resulting from poverty caused
by climate change, Murad said that Jordanians do not have the culture to marry
girls young to avoid financial expenses; “young girls get married due to
traditional and cultural circumstances, not for environmental reasons”, she
said.
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